


Of Tusks and Tyre Levers

by hubblegleeflower



Series: Favourite Ficlets [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, John is well endowed, John's enormous dong, M/M, Sherlock is sure of it as well, everyone knows this, fantasies, or so he thought
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 14:06:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6661549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hubblegleeflower/pseuds/hubblegleeflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has a virus in the data that makes him question the most fundamental truth he knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Tusks and Tyre Levers

**Author's Note:**

> A response to [this post](http://hubblegleeflower.tumblr.com/post/140753796463/phanofonedirection-221bmeta)this post, in which the Tumblrverse reacted when I dared to question certain self-evident truths about John Watson.
> 
> Rated "Mature" but I'm really not.

Sherlock takes a reeling, desperate breath and opens his eyes, gasping.

“Everything all right?”

John. The real John, sitting in his armchair, completely unaware, and only slightly concerned. While the very angle of his legs as he sits and reads confirms every deduction Sherlock has ever made about … _that_.

No. Everything is not all right.

Sherlock is profoundly shocked. Adrift. He cannot seem to draw a breath. He has seen something in the safety of his own mind that has made him question certain fundamental truths that _should be unassailable._ He can feel his heart thundering in his ears.

***

It started well. He was safe, comfortable, at ease on the sofa, John engrossed in his book, physically present but occupied. It was time.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and looked at John. The John he has built in his mind, over a long, long time.

This part was easy, he has seen John, _watched_ John, in so many different situations and attitudes that there is almost nothing left to be discovered here. (Always only almost.) John looked like John always looked.

John doesn’t usually look at him, though. Not like this.

There was nothing to be mistaken in the look John was giving him. There was no ambiguity now, no flickering expressions that needed to be parsed and analysed. The only look there now was steady, unwavering. It had a name, and what is more, Sherlock knew what it was.

_Desire._

***

“Hey. Hey, Sherlock.” John is looking more worried now. He has risen from his chair, and come to kneel beside Sherlock where he lies on the sofa. John’s hand is warm on his shoulder, but Sherlock only looks at him with wild, darting eyes. “Sherlock. What is it?”

“John. _John._ ” The touch is soothing, it is, but the vision is still so clear behind his eyes. He sits up on the sofa and begins to speak, desperately. “You were – I was in my, you know, I was – and you were there, and – oh, god. John. John, I need you. I need your help. It’s a virus, it must be. It’s – John. I need your help.”

“Okay, hey, settle down. It’s all right. What can I do?”

“I need –” and such is his agitation that he barely hesitates to say it out loud. “I need to see your body. I need to see you naked.”

***

He always tries to keep the world in his mind as consistent with reality as he can _._ John was there, looking as John always looks.The desire in John’s eyes was the only difference. Everything else, Sherlock has seen and pictured a thousand times. It was only this look that was new.

In his mind’s eye, John was going to show himself to Sherlock. John’s fingers rose to the buttons of his shirt, and he began to slip them open one by one. This, too, Sherlock has seen, surreptitiously or directly, many, many times. Once the shirt was off, though, in a heap on the floor, he was in new territory. There was flesh here that he has never even glimpsed, and where he has, those glimpses have been fleeting, sidelong, furtive. Now, though, that flesh was being laid bare beneath his eyes, _for him,_ and it was exactly as he had imagined it.

The skin of John’s chest was precisely the shade Sherlock knew it would be, somewhere between  _golden_ and _tawny_ , and shading even now towards _rosy_ as the flush rose into his neck. The hair was crisp, the nipples brown and oblong, like twin thumbprints.

(He saved up his deductions, hoarded them, adjusted them with infinite care, not allowing the whole picture to emerge until he was sure he had every detail perfect. Until he _knew_  John, down to the smallest particular. Before he allowed himself to do this.)

***

“I need to see you naked.”

John goes very still. He meets Sherlock’s eye with trepidation, and two – no, three – unreadable micro-expressions, and underneath it all, astonishingly, a trace of that same forthright desire. _I didn’t invent it._ It is buried, but it is clear.

(Sherlock cannot trust his own perceptions, though. That is precisely the problem.)

“Sherlock… _why?”_ John is affected, he must be, or he would be swearing. _What the fuck, Sherlock?_

“I – I have a picture of you.” His face flames. “In my mind. A picture of you.” He hates repeating himself.

“Of my – of my body.” John’s voice is remarkably steady.

“Yes.” Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut. “It’s very…detailed.  But just now some of the details were – askew. Off.” _Impossible._ “I need to see. I need to check if there’s something wrong with my perceptions, or if you really are – “ He can’t say this out loud. “If that’s just the way you are.”

“You need to check if my real naked body matches the picture you have of it, in your mind. The very detailed picture you have, in your mind, of my naked body.” John has no problem with repetition.

Sherlock knows he is admitting to everything here, but the anomaly, the glitch, is too jarring. There is nothing for it. “Exactly.”

***

_It went wrong on the very last step:_

John rested his hands on the waistband of his jeans, his fingers curled around the button. He met Sherlock’s eye and licked his lips, then flicked open the fastening and slid down the zip.

John stood there in his pants, dark grey boxer briefs, and there was only one detail left to confirm. The full picture had yet to emerge, but Sherlock had moved beyond apprehension. With the other details, it was always at least theoretically possible that he might have gotten it wrong, a shade of skin or the softness of a belly, perhaps, or the specific _swish_ of fabric.

Not this, though.

This was the final element, the one he composed with impossible care, painstakingly slowly, over  _years._ The observations, the ruminations, the – he could admit it – _fantasies_ that went into this one detail – there was no way he had got it wrong.

***

Sherlock is getting desperate, and John still hasn’t answered.  Embarrassment and exasperation both give way to _need._

“Please, John. This isn’t a whim. I need it. There’s something in my picture that’s _wrong._ Impossibly, absurdly _wrong._ I'm afraid _-_ ” And he stops here. He can only be so honest.

John decides. Rather faster than John would usually decide something like this. (What is _something like this_ , Sherlock wonders?) He rises, and stands on the carpet in front of Sherlock.

It is remarkably like his vision. The slow rise of his hands to his top button, the methodical unfastening at each discrete point, top to bottom, right wrist, left wrist. The slide of fabric on skin.

(This John, though, does not let the shirt pool on the floor, but folds it and lays it on the seat of the breakfast chair. _Tidy_.)

He does not know what he will see when John is finished taking off his clothes. _He does not know_. He was so sure he knew, and then…and now he does not know at all. What will he do if John’s body is how it was in his mind? What will he do if it’s not?

***

Back in his mind,  John slid the pants down over his hips.

Sherlock is completely unprepared and deeply, deeply shocked.

No. He had pictured this. He had _seen_ , he had  _observed_ , he had built up this vision from nothing. There was no way this, of all things, could be wrong.

He shook his head. Blinked, blinked again, to see if the horror before him had perhaps morphed into something conceivable…but no.

No. Wrong. How could it – ? It was beyond improbable, whatever the statistics say. _Impossible._

_No._

That was when he surfaced, gasping.

***

When John – the real John – is down to his pants, Sherlock stops him. “Wait.”

John waits.

Sherlock needs to _see_. He stands, and goes to where John is standing. John holds his eyes, _steady._ He has made the choice to do this for Sherlock, and now he is letting Sherlock do what he needs.

(He is _trusting_ Sherlock. As he has always done, in spite of everything.)

So Sherlock sets out to look.

He starts with John’s face – well. The face he sees all the time, waking and sleeping. It is and is not as he imagined it, because John’s face is never the same way twice. He has known his face for years, and has never looked at it without being surprised. No need to dwell on it now.

The shoulders are muscled and freckled, darker on the top, pale and pitted where the bullet pierced him. The chest, the colour of the skin, the coarse hair, all exactly as they should be. The flat belly, fuzzy, a little soft, the swell at the sides just above the waistband of the pants. There is nothing that Sherlock has not imagined, and every detail is, in reality, exactly as he had imagined.

Including the flush, rising through his chest. Including the hardening nipples. Sherlock yanks his eyes up to John’s and sees the telltale dilation. The trepidation is almost gone.

“Sherlock.” A note of steel has crept into John’s voice.

He pauses, listening.

“You have a detailed picture of my naked body in your mind.”

A reluctant nod.

“I – ” He gives a short laugh. “I know your methods, Sherlock. I’ve made a rather obvious deduction.”

It was inevitable. Sherlock does not argue.

“You’re not blind. You can look at me and make one too.”

It is impossible to mistake John’s meaning. Sherlock deliberately (and with titanic self control) does not allow his gaze to stray lower than John’s belly. He allows himself this moment, whatever else he will find. This moment where John’s body is exactly as he imagined it, and where John – the real John – is allowing his desire to surface.

They share a small smile. This new knowledge should shake both their worlds but they find, here, that it just settles into place around them. Perhaps because it is, in the end, utterly unsurprising.

“Well?” John asks, lightly. “Have you seen what you needed? Is everything in order?”

“I –” There is nothing left to hide, though. “I don’t know yet.” John understands immediately.

Sherlock holds his breath.

When this real John slides his pants off, the relief is overwhelming. With the briefest glance for permission (John's wide-eyed nod) Sherlock takes John’s cock – heavy and filling and already wet, from the movement of Sherlock’s eyes over his body – in both hands. His sigh is almost a sob as he lavishes John’s prick with caresses, curling long fingers around it, filling his whole huge hand with it.

John hisses and throws his head back at the first touch, thrusting his hips forward to press his cock into Sherlock’s hand, and lets him touch his fill.

 _It is perfect_. The size of it, the weight, the way it is rising under Sherlock’s hand and managing to stand straight upward despite the considerable pull of gravity on its impressive heft.

“I knew it,” Sherlock breathes, still stroking, still worshipping. The anomaly – the fly in the ointment, the virus in the data – it was only in his mind. It was the last vestige of fear, fear that he couldn’t possibly know John as well as he imagined, fear that he got this, this last, intimate detail, wrong – and would never know the truth. “I knew it, but I was afraid.”

“Can I – _god,_ Sherlock, that’s _amazing_ – can I ask what the problem was? With my penis, in your mind?”

“It was…” It is almost too ridiculous to say, now that the danger is past.

“What? Purple? Flaccid? Toothed? I don’t know – _boring_ , in some way?" John can be a smartarse under any circumstances. "What was the problem?”

“John – I know it’s absurd, I see that now – but _John.”_ He pauses.

“For god’s sake, Sherlock, what?”

 _Go on, say it._  No more secrets. 

“It was… _average sized._ ”

And as soon as he says it, he can laugh. It was a ridiculous notion, after all. He dismisses it completely as he wraps his arms around the man he has studied for so long, and whose love and desire will never again be only a vision.


End file.
